As a kid growing up in a Christian environment, I was dutiful in my study of Scripture and in accepting the theology handed to me. But I had two questions that kept circling in my head like a fly caught in a room:

“Once we come to the end, how will all the people who have ever lived fit on the ‘New Earth’? What will we all do?”

“If infinity stretches forever behind and forever ahead, why would God choose to create the world at a single, teeny tiny point on that timeline? Are we really that important that nothing existed before, and nothing will exist after the ‘New Earth’?”

Kids ask good questions. I won’t claim mine were profound, but looking back, I can see how much was packed into the theological boxes I had been given and how quickly I began to notice what didn’t quite fit inside them.

I didn’t know it at the time, but both questions were really about the nature of time and both God’s and our purpose within a timeline. This stock linear model of time that came with my education seems straightforward, but it contains tensions that even an 11-year-old can sense.

When I was first introduced to the idea of time as a circle or a spiral, I was struck by how many questions it answered, including ones I didn’t yet know how to ask. The challenge, then and now, is how to navigate inherited traditions and mindsets while breaking into a new way of understanding reality—that is, a new mode of consciousness.

The desire to understand what it takes to shift a collective mindset is what led me to look backward and ask what past shifts in consciousness might reveal about the questions we should be asking in the present.

Across Part One and Part Two of this series, I argue that consciousness evolves in a cyclical or spiral pattern rather than a linear one, and that enduring human practices—especially astrology—make this pattern visible. However, I also argue that an old mindset doesn’t make it all bad. There are elements that might still reflect reality in ways we hadn’t realized because our mindset wasn’t geared to see them.

When reinterpreted through this cyclical model of time, I suggest that the concept of redemption not only fits within this structure but also reflects an element of reality perhaps we hadn’t considered. This shift in awareness could also begin to resolve some of the theological tensions that my younger self was grappling with.

Enduring Orientations toward Reality

When we look across recorded and archaeological history, we see multiple iterations or evolutions of consciousness. Religions, political systems, and innovations have come and gone, while others linger in fragments. However fleeting, they are pieces of larger patterns of thought, and in some cases, they have helped shift paradigms.

For that reason, I approach traditions like Christian theology, Greek and Indian philosophy, and esoteric systems not as competing truth claims, but as different expressions of an underlying thread—one that continues to weave through human history.

However, what fascinates me most are the ideas and practices that have endured across all of history and what they might reveal about human nature and the structure of reality itself. But these enduring elements are not always what we expect.

Lascaux Cave painting of aurochs, horses and deer

For example, we have not always been farmers. Agriculture emerged during the Neolithic period, when hunter-gatherer societies began to settle. But we do find prehistoric art (such as the cave paintings at Lascaux Cave, France and Ubirr, Australia) that points to a much older and more persistent human impulse: the need to externalize experience into symbolic form. In that sense, art may be more fundamental to the human experience than agriculture.

Similarly, while hierarchical social structures developed after global climate change, humans appear to have always maintained some form of relationship to the invisible or transcendent—whether through spirits, ancestors, gods, or even abstract forces like Pythagorean numbers or the collective unconscious.

A small handful of practices and ideas like art and the transcendent have journeyed with us the whole way, like the one or two best friends or family members you keep for your whole life. By observing these relationships, we can see more tangibly what we might call an enduring human orientation toward reality. For the purpose of this article, I’m framing those ‘orientations toward reality’ as our most consistent data points of how our consciousness has evolved throughout time.

While art has helped us express the experience of human life, and our relationship to the invisible has helped us reach beyond the five senses, the practice I want to focus on throughout this series is astrology—or celestial meaning-making, if you prefer. This “lifelong friend” in particular helps situate us within the nature of time and reflects our worldview throughout. For this reason, astrology is one of the most stable external reference systems humans have ever used.

Thus, astrology might also give us a clue as to where our collective consciousness is headed today and what our task at hand is.

Rethinking Consciousness

Consciousness can be understood as our awareness of reality—shaped through sensation, environment, ideas, and lived experience. It includes both our worldview and our perceived relationship to the world itself. For example, when I became conscious of the potential for a non-linear model of time, my perception of how history works changed.

The development of consciousness is often uncomfortable though. It requires the repeated dissolution of what we thought was true, each time we encounter the limits of our understanding. Yet this process is also generative. It is how we become more attuned to what it means to be human and to whatever we might call purpose.

As my 11-year-old self illustrates, we are wired to ask questions that stretch the boundaries of the frameworks we’ve been given.

I mentioned in previous articles that we develop an awareness of beingness or who “I am” and who “we are” through our creativity and relationships: within oneself, to the Earth, and between each other and the Divine. While these are the catalysts of awareness-making, it doesn’t address how or why this awareness has developed over time.

For example, do we begin as a tabula rasa—a blank slate—gradually becoming more knowledgeable over time? Sir Edward Tylor proposed what is often called the “primitive error hypothesis,” suggesting that human intellectual development progressed from magic, to religion, to science—each stage representing a more “correct” understanding of reality.1

While this neat and tidy linear trajectory of consciousness serves our collective ego, it does not adequately account for the contradictions of a species that is destroying its habitat and each other. Therefore, I’d like to suggest that like time, the process of becoming conscious isn’t linear — it’s a spiral or a circle depending on your point of view.

As Sir Tylor so aptly demonstrated for us, a linear model suggests an ultimate culmination point which is what Persian Zoroastrianism and the major monotheistic religions of our day ascribe to.2

Using the religious framework I was handed as a kid, this linear idea of culmination is easily seen in Christianity’s concept of conquering death and the eventual New Earth at Christ’s second coming.3 This culmination idea which I’ll generally call ‘Heaven’ has numerous names in other religions and paradigms of thought: Elysium, Valhalla, Zion, Utopia, or a future state of unified consciousness.

However, culmination still exists as one point within a cyclical system, such as the number 12 on a clock. The difference is that after reaching this culmination point, the cycle restarts. There are some cyclical concepts like Nirvana where escape from the cycle is the point, again culminating in a separate and final end point. This separate end point is necessary in this type of model because there is pain attached to the cycle which must be overcome.

However, if the cycle includes freedom from and over darkness and pain, then there is no need to “escape” the cycle. The freedom from pain leads to rebirth so that it can be transmuted again. In this model, death (for example) does not need to be feared and escaped. Death is part of the process because it brings regeneration and rebirth.

Ruptures, collapses, breakthroughs, and repair are all built into a cyclical idea of both time and consciousness, as well as the basic astrological paradigm which I’ll outline in Part Two. 

But this realization led me to wonder, did Christianity get it all wrong? Is the entire paradigm built on linear time headed towards an Edenic cliff?

Redemption Reconsidered

I’d like to start by infusing another concept 11-year-old Christina was handed within the Christian linear paradigmatic box that spawned her questions: redemption.

In addition to Creationism and Heaven, the concept of Redemption serves as a sort-of middle point between these two beginning and culmination points: the Earth was created by an omnipotent Creator (Creationism); we humans messed it up, so that Creator offered a way to fix it (Redemption); which enables us to rejoin the Creator after death (Heaven). While this concept serves a linear model, I don’t think it should be exclusively tied to it.

Redemption, at its core, is the act of regaining something that was lost—often through some form of exchange or payment. The original Greek word used in the New Testament, apolytrōsis (ἀπολύτρωσις), is a compound of two parts: ‘separation of a part from the whole’ and ‘ransom’ or payment.4 A modern day equivalent could be thought of as buying something back from a pawn shop that you sold.

In Christianity, redemption is framed as the restoration of a relationship with God through Christ’s sacrifice. The familiar line from Amazing Grace, “I once was lost but now am found,” captures this arc succinctly: an implied original state of union, followed by loss, and then recovery.

But this raises a deeper question: what exactly was lost?

If the soul is newly created5 and born already separated from God, can it truly be said to have lost anything? Because to lose something is to have had it in the first place. Was there ever an original union that newly created souls held before losing it?

To answer that question, we need to return to the beginning.

The Creation of Adam, a detail of the fresco Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo

Breath as the Conduit of Consciousness

The Hebrew word נְשָׁמָה or nᵉshâmâh appears in the Genesis creation account, describing the “breath” of life imparted by God. Yet its meaning extends beyond physical respiration.6 Consider this single conversation from Job:

In one instance, it refers to literal breath:

“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath (נְשָׁמָה nᵉshâmâh) of the Almighty hath given me life.” (NIV, Job 33:4)

In another, it signifies inspiration or understanding — a spiritual consciousness:

“Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration (נְשָׁמָה nᵉshâmâh) of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” (NIV, Job 32:7-8)

This dual meaning suggests that shamah functions as a bridge between physical existence and conscious awareness.

This concept is also found outside the Judeo-Christian tradition in concepts like meditation and yoga which connect the practice of focusing on one’s breath and the experience of enlightenment. It is no accident that spiritual health has been connected to physical health, such as reduced cortisol, lower blood pressure, and stronger immunity.7

If this is the case, then we are not blank slates, but beings equipped with an innate capacity for transcendent perception—what might be described as a latent conduit for awareness. Whether or not we choose to use it or “lose” it, is up to us, but attaining wisdom depends on our connection to that inborn conduit.

This is also a great example of why astrology is understood as a conduit of divination or divine inspiration. As Job 32:7-8 points out, “days” (יוֹם yôwm, meaning “time”) and a “multitude of years” should enlighten us but it is God’s inspiration that actually imparts understanding. The ‘days and years’ that make up the measurement and passing of time should speak to us — and I would argue that they do, archetypally. But it is the connection to Spirit or the transcendent which gives us the exact inspiration needed to interpret that passage of time meaningfully and in a more particular way.

Redemption, therefore, is a reconnection to that conduit — like a lost path through the woods that is found again and cleared of debris, reconnecting us to the other side.

The important concept to take away here is that our “beginning” is neither a blank slate, nor a deficit. We begin in a state of wholeness and full potentiality. Some would say this explains why young children appear to exhibit extra-sensory abilities and spiritual gifts that are later lost and disregarded as made-up.

While I realize this concept sounds heretical within a Christian paradigm where we are born totally depraved, I will point out the uncomfortable theological problem of the death of a child. How the Church has dealt with this issue illuminates the concept of shamah.

In the Middle Ages, the belief that all humans were born sinful meant that infants who died before baptism were believed to be stuck in limbo.8 This created a whole system of superstitious formulas to save the child’s soul. One of these necessary steps was exorcism which included insufflatio or ritual breathing over the child which was believed to drive out evil spirits.9 Breath redeemed them.

Today, most people believe in ‘the age of accountability’ as a solution to that uncomfortable hard line. Despite the fact that the Bible never explicitly states this, the belief is that those who cannot distinguish between right and wrong (such as children) are not held accountable for sin, suggesting that we are born into a form of innocence or wholeness that is “lost” as the child grows and begins to understand right from wrong.

Whether this breath is external or inborn, I would argue that we begin in a state of wholeness but lose touch with that connection to the Divine. Our redemptive task, then, is to find what was lost and reconnect. This story arc can be seen outside of theology too. Within literature, The Hero’s Journey is another more elaborate model of this cycle, as is Lifespan Development theories in psychology.

But we are still left with a problem: regardless if we start from a place of wholeness or deficit, this does not necessitate a cycle. Or does it?

The Problem of ‘The End’

Returning to the questions my 11-year-old self posed, the “end” of that story arc offers us some clarity on why the cyclical model is more appropriate. Once we reach this culmination point called Heaven and we are all redeemed, having regained that Edenic union in the New Earth,

“Where do 118 billion individual souls go and what do we do then?”10

“Doesn’t God still want to make other stuff?”

In other words, what’s next? ‘The End’ has come and gone across the screen, the credits have rolled, and now we sit for eternity?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I previously talked about our creative nature as a unique human attribute. Why do we not stop creating after we’ve achieved a goal? Why do we eventually get bored and restless after achieving success? There is a primordial drive to continually create towards an experience of fulfillment or satisfaction.

So, if we were to achieve Heaven, would we cease the desire to create? And if we are made in the image of God, then doesn’t this suggest that God’s nature would also want to continue to create?

Another brief textual exegesis might be helpful to understand why the creative cycle must continue — both to meet this question within the paradigm kid-Christina asked and to inform how our ‘enduring human orientation toward reality’ (i.e. astrology) parallels it.

Why the Cycle Must Continue

Genesis tells us that on the seventh day of creation, God “rested.” What does this mean that God “rested”?11

In Hebrew, the word used is Šāḇaṯ (שָׁבַת) which is where the word “Sabbath” comes from.12 This word is used in the Old Testament 47 times to mean “cease,” as in God’s promise that as long as the earth endures, time will never “cease”.13

However, within the context of the Genesis creation story (and 8 other instances in the Old Testament), Šāḇaṯ actually means “rest”. However, we are told in the Exodus account that to rest is more than stopping. It is an action of regeneration and enjoyment which enables the continuation of creation. The purpose of resting is to become “refreshed” so that work or creativity can be resumed.14

Even if we have “finished” creating something (just as God did in Genesis 2:2), the purpose of resting is to enable new growth. This is the same reason God commanded that fields needed to “rest” so that they might regenerate and produce again. This is the scientific purpose behind the farming practice of ‘crop rotation’.15 This is also the theological reason why on Saturdays, the Sabbath, Jews and Seventh-Day Adventist Christians rest from all work, so that they might resume on the first day, refreshed.

Thus, if God both demonstrated and commanded “resting” on the seventh day so that work and creativity could continue on the first day, then it follows that God will continue to create as well — even after “finishing” the New Earth.

An artist will tell you that to create is to enter into a dialogue or a relationship with the thing that is being created. It doesn’t go one-way. You may go in with an idea or image in your mind, but the words or the clay do not bend as you thought they would, so you must adjust in order to listen and hear the inspiration that desires to come through.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the world and humans with free will, meaning: God entered into the creative act in a dialogue or a relationship with His creation, knowing that humans might push back against the Potter. 

Every relationship includes the inevitability of rupture and repair as a process of strengthening and recreating that relationship. Thus, to reach the culmination point of the New Earth is not “the end.” It is a resting point that affords the time and space to refresh so that the creative process can continue.

The Flaw in Perfection

Creativity and the evolution of consciousness are parallel processes, or perhaps even the same. Even after paradigm-shifting discoveries like the Copernican Revolution, we did not cease asking questions. Perhaps there was a “rest” as we marveled at this new reunification with a small element of reality and all the ramifications that went with it. But then we started asking more questions, and off we went.

As you can see, we are now pushing up against this linear endpoint of consciousness and looking over the edge of the cliff. Not only do time and consciousness appear to be cyclical, but there appears to be cycles within cycles of rupture and repair. If both time and consciousness are a circle or a spiral, it affords a continual process of both being and continual becoming.

It is also the point at which the concept of Redemption doesn’t need to be discarded but re-situated in that new shape of consciousness: while we may begin in a state of union, there is rupture and loss, but then also recovery and reunification, with the relationship strengthening through each reforging.

The Japanese art and philosophical concept of kintsugi (金継ぎ), or “golden joinery,” offers a striking visual metaphor. Broken pottery is repaired using lacquer mixed with gold, highlighting rather than concealing the fractures. In essence, it celebrates its history rather than trying to disguise it as something “perfect”.16

Photo by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash

The psychological-scientific community agrees with this art and philosophy. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have studied intimate relationships for decades and have found that a couple’s ability to engage in repair after rupture is one of the strongest predictors of long-term relationship success and satisfaction — not the absence of conflict.17 In fact, relationships without conflict tend to lack the glue needed to keep it together, leading to a slow and gradual drift apart.18

“Redemption,” therefore, becomes a key strengthening point — the “golden joinery” of the evolution of consciousness. Think about the renewed gratitude, appreciation, and joy you feel when you’ve finally found something you lost or fixed what had been broken. The investment of effort and time alone increases its value more than if you had been carrying it in your pocket the whole time.

If this cyclical model of time and consciousness is more than a compelling metaphor and reflects something structurally true about human experience, then we should be able to see it play out across history. Not just in theology or philosophy, but in the practices that have endured alongside us.

In Part Two, I turn to one such practice—astrology—and to one of its oldest organizing frameworks: the elements. With the help of a preSocratic philosopher, we can begin to trace how this cycle of wholeness, rupture, redemption, and repair has unfolded across human consciousness itself.

A 'Modern' History Lesson

“Mordor…is it left or right?”

In previous installments of this series, I examined the Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries from multiple perspectives across time, each exploring an element of dissolving (Neptune) and redefining (Saturn) who “I am” (Aries) as an individual and as homo sapiens:

In Part One, I explored how our creativity is critical to being a conscious human being, and the present dilemma posed by our use of LLMs: we have unprecedented access to free, fast, and frictionless assistance, yet our use of it is quietly stealing our consciousness along the way. 

In Part Two, I considered the future transhumanist path that LLMs and AI are leading us toward and how to avoid ending up with a bionic soul. 

In Part Three, I examined two prior Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries in our prehistoric past and what they reveal about our relationship with the Earth as an essential ingredient in defining ourselves as homo sapiens.

In this final article, I explore more “recent” Saturn–Neptune conjunctions in Aries and consider how these moments highlighted the social and spiritual dimensions of identity as a necessary way of defining who “I am.”

More pointedly, I believe we are at a watershed moment that requires a decision:

Do we go right and continue down a path that promises ease, comfort, and power at the cost of consciousness and our habitat? 

—Or—

Do we go left and consciously choose a path that requires no small amount of effort to face our shadows, our limitations, and even our own goodness—at the potential gain of healthier relationships?

It may (or may not) seem like an obvious choice. Like Frodo at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, we may think, “Of course you need to go to Mordor. It’s what you’re meant to do, Frodo.” Yet that view lacks the knowledge of what lies ahead and how difficult, but salvific, the journey would be for Middle-Earth’s survival.

We have an advantage though. We have prior “adventures” in redefining ourselves that we can look back on and use to inform our present choices.

So with that as our guide, remind me again, Gandalf: “Mordor…is it left or right?

Map of Middle Earth: https://wallpapers.com/wallpapers/middle-earth-map-lotr-yx9t3d12pic3ibsk.html

A Modern History Lesson: Case Studies in Redefining Who “I Am”

The African philosophical concept of Ubuntu (“I am because we are”),(1) the Korean philosophical concept of hanul (“the process of becoming together”),(2) and the First Nations philosophy of “all my relations” (or interconnectedness)(3) are just a few examples of a widespread understanding: the self is defined in connection to others. 

But this extends beyond social relationships into spiritual ones as well. 

The idea that a human being is part of God or Truth—and that divinity is therefore a core element of identity—appears in concepts such as atman (Hinduism), Imago Dei (Christianity), and pratītyasamutpāda or “interdependence” (Buddhism)(4) to name just a few.

In short, outside of modern Western individualistic and scientific thought, the idea of a self existing apart from relationship (whether human or divine) simply did not make sense.

This should tell us something about what it means to “be” a species called homo sapiens. Beyond being social animals, the human self exists within connection to other selves. The question, then, is what happens when we attempt to sever that connection in order to redefine who “I am”?

Previous Saturn–Neptune conjunctions in Aries offer some revealing glimpses.

91 BCE: Redefining Legal Identity

For centuries, Rome allied with Italian communities to gain soldiers, tribute, and allegiance. However, these socii were not citizens, and Roman citizenship determined legal personhood and rights within the state. 

After helping Rome dominate the Mediterranean, the socii demanded full citizenship. Rome not only denied the request but assassinated one of their leaders, Marcus Livius Drusus, to maintain control.(5)

The socii responded by declaring their own state, sparking the Social War. Rome attempted to resist, but because the socii comprised the majority of its army, resistance proved futile. In 90 BCE, Lex Julia de civitate granted citizenship to most Italian communities—one of the largest expansions of political identity in antiquity.(6)

232 CE: Redefining Divine Identity

Origen of Alexandria was a Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian whose ideas expanded what it meant to be human.

In On the First Principles and Contra Celsum, he proposed the preexistence of souls, universal restoration to the divine (including demons), and an allegorical reading of Scripture instead of a literal one. His theology centered on humans as fallen rational beings capable of divine ascent.(7)

Origen attracted intense criticism from Church authorities because his ideas destabilized the boundary between human and divine. He eventually died from injuries sustained during torture inflicted by the authorities. Yet his ideas lived on and resurfaced in the next Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries.

Origen of Alexandria: https://owlcation.com/humanities/was-the-gospel-of-thomas-considered-scripture

555 CE: Redefining Personhood

Justinian I pursued legal, theological, and imperial unity with near obsession. His Corpus Juris Civilis defined who qualified as a legal “person” and who could be treated as property. While it clarified distinctions between slavery and personhood, it also narrowed theological ambiguity.

In 553 CE, the Second Council of Constantinople confirmed Justinian’s condemnations of certain theological positions, including Origenism. This was a direct effort to regulate speculative theology and solidify a fixed definition of humanity’s spiritual nature in relation to God.

By 555, the Council had excommunicated, imprisoned, and strong-armed Pope Vigilius into signing off on their mandates.(8)

1380 CE: Redefining Access to Truth

John Wycliffe, theologian and philosopher, antagonized the Church, State, and University by criticizing ecclesiastical overreach. By 1380, his focus turned toward rejecting transubstantiation—the belief that the Eucharist literally becomes the body and blood of Christ.(9)

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381–1382 followed soon after, fueled in part by his teachings. At its core were issues of taxation, inequality, and hierarchical definitions of human worth. Wycliffe also emphasized direct lay access to Scripture and divine truth.

Though he avoided excommunication during his lifetime, his followers—the Lollards—were later executed. Thirty years after his death, the Church excommunicated Wycliffe posthumously, exhumed his bones, and burned them.

1703 CE: Redefining Consciousness

John Locke argued in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) and that knowledge derives from experience. Identity, therefore, rests on the continuity of awareness. Locke also advanced theories of self-ownership and property, asserting that labor transforms objects into personal property rather than property being granted by monarchs.(10)

However, his work also posthumously contributed to the justification of slavery and exclusion from civic participation. This fueled European debates about the rationality of Indigenous peoples and the rights of enslaved Africans.

In response, Gottfried Leibniz composed New Essays on Human Understanding in 1703 and later Monadology, challenging Locke’s empiricism. Leibniz argued that experience activates what is already latent within the human being.(11) His metaphysics also proposed that animals possess perception, suggesting a continuum of consciousness.

This empiricist–rationalist debate echoes into the present AI Revolution.

Gottfried Leibniz: https://footnotes2plato.com/2014/03/24/schelling-whitehead-inheriting-spinoza-leibniz-god-and-the-modern-world/ 

Redefining Autonomy and Attachment

In each of these Saturn–Neptune in Aries moments, important written works challenged the boundary of who counts as a person and who defines that boundary. Some expanded identity and others narrowed it in the name of unity or control. All were attempts to negotiate identity within relationships: to the self, each other, and to God.

As we saw in Part One and Part Two of this series, these historical examples are dynamically relevant to defining boundaries in relationships to the self in today’s AI Revolution. These examples also provide a useful bridge to psychological concepts that illuminate our current process of redefining identity with each other and to the Divine: attachment, codependency, autonomy, and differentiation.

Every relationship involves attachment. Too much becomes codependency; too little becomes detachment or extreme autonomy. The middle ground is differentiation.

Differentiation is a lifelong process of defining a unique sense of self while maintaining emotional connection to others. It is both the antidote to codependency and the fertilizer for intimacy. 

Healthy differentiation means that when I express ideas, needs, or desires that differ from yours, I am not threatened with abandonment or shame. The difference is tolerated (perhaps even welcomed) and the relationship survives.

Differentiation also means that I do not require isolation in order to maintain authenticity or a separate sense of self. Excessive autonomy breeds detachment and undermines belonging.

These concepts remind us that relationships are the crucible of identity. To relate is to encounter difference and conflict. In that crucible, parts of you are burned away and parts are forged.

Avoiding relationships altogether is an illusion of safety and distance. Saying, “I am separating myself from you” still positions oneself in proximity to the other—it does not make them cease to exist. 

The inverse of this illusion in modern Western culture is “ghosting”—pretending that “I don’t exist so you can’t connect with me.”

Philosophically speaking, this is the illusion of the radical individualism I mentioned at the start of this article—or, as Max Weber described it, the “disenchantment of the world.” This Western cultural shift toward rationalism and a de-spirited cosmos leads us to believe that isolating the self makes the other disappear when it does not.

You cannot deny the other without acknowledging the existence of an other and in the process, relate to the other.

For example, Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead” presupposes an ‘other’ called God. A person’s refusal to believe in a God may create relational distance, but not ontological annihilation. Thus, even nihilism—the belief that ultimate meaning and knowledge are not possible—affirms a relationship to higher purpose or Truth. If there is no Truth, there is nothing by which nihilism could define or contrast itself.

In every-day-speak, when we refuse to “see” the other—by denying personhood, citizenship, divinity, access to Truth, or consciousness—we are evading relationships, not causing them to cease to exist. In actuality, to evade relationships is to avoid conflict, responsibility, and differentiation, and this tactic usually stems from an insecure identity. 

These evasions are rarely philosophical ideas though. They are rooted in personal beliefs picked up like souvenirs during our adventures in relationships. For example:

• I believe no one will stay if I express my needs, so I’ll just go-along to avoid rejection.

• I believe I am fundamentally flawed, so I’ll withhold my authentic self to avoid being seen and shamed.

• I believe I’ll be consumed if I’m in a relationship, so I’ll just avoid intimacy altogether.

Conflict, authenticity, and differentiation can feel like standing naked in a town square. It is no surprise we spend much of our lives avoiding them. Yet they are essential to meaningful relationships and to defining what it means “to be” me.

Removing the Blindfold

This Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries asks us to redefine who “I am” without swinging between isolation or codependency. Differentiation and authenticity do not deny the existence of the other, but they are not achieved in a single decision either. They are kind of more like verbs than nouns.

Brene Brown, the authenticity expert, says in The Gifts of Imperfection(12):

“Like many desirable ways of being, authenticity is not something that we either have or don’t have. It’s a practice. It’s a conscious choice of how we want to live. Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every single day. It’s about a choice to show up and be real, a choice to be honest, a choice to let our true selves be seen. Authenticity is this: it’s the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are. It’s cultivating and choosing the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.”

Redefining what homo sapiens are or who “I am” is neither a declaration of total autonomy, nor a system setting or prompt fed into an LLM. Authentic identity is not programmable. It is a lived process—daily decisions—about how we relate to the Earth, to others, to ourselves, and to the Divine.

Throughout this series, I suggested that instead of asking when AI becomes conscious, we should ask when we become unconscious. Saturn-Neptune in Aries suggests that consciousness means applying creativity, moving from dissociation toward feeling, and acknowledging our relationships to the Earth, to each other, and to Truth.

Consciousness is an ongoing process of authenticity and differentiation, which means the path is not chosen once. It is chosen daily.

Which also means, it’s not too late to turn left, Frodo.

Cover Art from Unsplash: ashkan-forouzani-m0l9NBCivuk-unsplash.jpg

Footnotes:

A Pre-History Lesson

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.”

– William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hamlet’s Dilemma

Hamlet asked his famous question as an individual. But sometimes history asks it of an entire species:

What does it mean to be “alive?” What constitutes a person? What makes us a conscious species deserving of the title “wise man” (homo= man; sapiens = knowing or wise)?

These are not small existential questions. And yet they are exactly the questions being mirrored now through the fusion of Saturn and Neptune in Aries—the sign of “I am”—at the very beginning of the zodiac.

Their conjunction on February 20, 2026 at 0° Aries marks an important moment. But it also signals a much larger story that has been unfolding for a long time.

Neptune dissolves boundaries. Saturn builds structures. When these two archetypes meet in Aries, they can provoke Hamlet-like questions about what it means “to be”—not just as individuals, but as human beings. They ask us to redefine who “I am.”

But when this conjunction occurs at 0° Aries—the world axis—the scope becomes far larger. The question expands from the identity of the individual to the identity of the species. What does it mean for homo sapiens “to be”?

As I mentioned in Part One, I do not believe it is an overstatement to call this a “Genesis Moment.”

And now that I’ve framed this current quality of time with no small amount of gravitas, I will add this: we’ve been here before.

Humanity has approached this threshold in the past and made decisions about what it means to be human—both individually and collectively. Those decisions reshaped our relationship to one another and to the Earth itself.

When did those decisions occur?

Here is a clue: every species is defined by its relationship with its ecosystem.

In this series, we have already explored a present-day existential quandary involving LLMs and a future-oriented question of “becoming” and the role transhumanism is playing. Now, in Parts Three and Four, we turn to the past—first to prehistory and then to early recorded history—to examine how humanity has answered these questions before.

For now, we begin at the beginning.

A Pre-History Lesson

Most Saturn–Neptune conjunctions do not occur at the birthing point of the zodiac.

In fact, determining whether this alignment had ever occurred at 0° Aries required a fair amount of research(1) and calculation to determine whether this alignment had ever occurred at 0° Aries in recorded history. As it turns out, it has not happened in “recorded” history—but it has occurred twice in prehistory, with the second instance occurring at 0°01’ Aries! (A detailed explanation of these calculations appears in the footnotes for those who enjoy celestial math.)(2)

These two dates are August of 8128 BCE and January of 4360 BCE. That’s it. No Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries for the last 6,400 years. You may be thinking, “That’s interesting…but what can we possibly learn from a moment that far back in time?” It turns out, quite a lot.

August 8128 BCE: The Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution, occurring roughly between 10,000 and 8,000 BCE, marked one of the most significant transitions in human history. It is commonly described as the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones following the end of the Ice Age.

Some scholars, particularly supporters of the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, argue that this period may also represent recovery after the collapse of earlier and possibly more technologically sophisticated cultures. Regardless of which interpretation proves correct, one fact remains clear: the Earth was changing, and humanity adapted.

Drivers of this adaptation included dramatic climate change and population pressures. By around 8,000 BCE, melting ice sheets in the North Atlantic began flooding the region between Britain, Denmark, and the northern European coast. This process eventually submerged a landmass now known as Dogger Land, displacing entire populations and compressing communities into smaller areas.(3)

Environmental instability also increased the need for reliable food sources.

In response to this, some of the earliest urban settlements in Mesopotamia, such as Çatalhöyük in central Turkey and Jericho,(4) eventually began experimenting with domesticated plants. These early agricultural “technologies” required human intervention to grow and propagate, gradually reshaping daily life.(5)

Does climate change and the impact of changing technologies sound familiar?

Humanity’s relationship to food, daily life, social organization, and the Earth itself shifted toward a new agricultural paradigm. I would argue our present revolution is no less seismic. But it is also dynamically connected to that earlier shift 10,000-12,000 years ago. To understand why, we must first understand the Great Year.

The Great Year

Every 72 years, the sidereal vernal equinox shifts approximately 1° earlier in the zodiac (for example, shifting from 0° Aries to 29° Pisces and onward towards 6° Pisces where it is today). This essentially means that over long periods of time, the first day of spring slowly moves backward through the signs. This phenomenon is called the precession of the equinoxes and it takes approximately 25,772 years to complete a full 360° cycle. Astrologers often refer to this cycle as the Great Year.

If we treat the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries in 8128 BCE as a symbolic starting point within that 25,772-year cycle—not an absolute beginning, but a meaningful point within it—we are now approaching its halfway point, or its 180° opposition.

In other words, we may be standing halfway through a civilizational experiment that began thousands of years ago.

In astrology, oppositions are dynamic and are sometimes described as a crisis point of culmination. They represent tension between initial impulse and maturation, or between origin and outcome. They can create friction but also catalytic change if needed. If 8128 BCE marked the archetypal “birth” of an agrarian identity or rebuilding from a more technologically sophisticated culture, then the present moment signals a reckoning with the development of that identity.

About 10,000–12,000 years ago, we chose to become a species that cultivated the earth, building communities after climatic upheaval. In saying, “Let’s all pitch our tent here,” we created social roles. Some cultivated, some hunted, some guarded, some innovated. Our homes changed. Our rhythms changed. Our relationships changed. Our relationship to the Earth changed.

It should not surprise us then, that we are being asked to revisit those foundations now. It is almost like our mother, Gaia, giving us free reign to play and after hearing a commotion a half hour later, she returns to the room and asks, “What on Earth are you doing in here?!”

It does not take an astrologer, sociologist, or environmentalist to see that we’ve made quite a mess. Perhaps it does take a comedian like Rob Newman to point out, “There is no Planet B.”(6) So now what?

Do we clean up our mess and try again? Do we double down? Do we wait for consequences? At one of the largest turning points in a vast cycle of time, humanity is being asked to reflect on its identity as a species on Earth:

Are we here to live—or to consume?

Are we like a virus—or a participant in balance?

Are we capable of playing well with others?

January 4360 BCE: The Growth of Communal Spiritual Identities

Nearly 4,000 years later, the Earth shifted again. 

During the African Humid Period of 4500-4000 BCE, the Sahara transformed again due to the Earth’s wobble—stemming from that same long-term precessional movement of the Earth. What was once grasslands, lakes and rivers, and an otherwise habitable savanna became a scorching desert. Weakened monsoon patterns gradually dried arable land.(7)

Climate once again reshaped identity.

As a result of this symbolic shift from wet and cool Pisces to hot and dry Aries, African humans migrated toward the Nile Valley, laying foundations for Egyptian civilization. Trade networks expanded and predynastic Egyptian burial sites began to reflect social differentiation.

Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, the Ubaid period (6500-3800 BCE) brought advances in irrigation and social stratification as well. As settlements stabilized, humans became more attentive to natural cycles—and more aware of how dramatically the Earth itself could change. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise then that evidence of mother-goddess worship appears as early as 6750 BCE at sites such as Jarmo. Small statues of pregnant women have been found there in large numbers, suggesting that each household contained at least one example of this fertility-centric awareness.(8)

During the later Ubaid period, these households began organizing themselves into communities with religious centers. For example, the famous ziggurat at Eridu—dating to around 2100 BCE—was built atop seventeen earlier temple structures. Archaeological layers show that the site had been used continuously for ritual purposes as far back as 5000 BCE.(9)

Elsewhere, in the Negev Desert, archaeologists have uncovered a complex oriented toward the four cardinal directions with a designated area of worship facing the setting sun. It dates to roughly 4700–4200 BCE—one again, close to the second Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries.(10)

Together, these examples suggest that communities were increasingly organizing themselves around shared spiritual identities.

Environmental change had once again catalyzed social, technological, and spiritual reorganization.

Choosing Between Car Accidents or a Bat

It is striking that Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries have occurred only twice in roughly 10,000 years. One might expect more data for such an important point in the zodiac. Yet the rarity of these alignments makes their coincidence with major shifts in human identity difficult to ignore.

Many of the structures that shaped our species’ development emerged during these earlier periods: agriculture, technology, hierarchy, and organized spirituality.

Only recently have we begun growing food in labs, developing technologies capable of planetary destruction, or attempting to leave Earth entirely. Along the way, we have used social stratification and religion both to organize society and dominate one another.

But it’s easy to critique the trajectory of our species without looking at oneself.

Image taken on my cross-country departure from city to rural life

I remember vividly driving away from my home of almost nine years in a major city. My apartment was only a few blocks from a highway, which meant a constant soundtrack of screeching tires, crashes, and sirens. I didn’t realize how much subconscious stress this had placed on my body until I was about twenty minutes outside the city and noticed something startling: silence.

Green fields stretched out before me, an optic oasis for desert-stricken eyes. In that moment it became clear how de-centered I had become from the biological relationship between the Earth and my body’s natural rhythms and needs.

But the story doesn’t end there.

I went to stay with some family in an agricultural community. My family grows their own food and stores it for the winter, and is generally, very attuned to the land. However, this shift to a more ecologically attuned place was also a racially and religiously homogeneous community. After a while, I began to notice another startling sensation: social and spiritual silence. I felt a protective turning inward. In a religious community where even Lutherans are sometimes suspected of not being Christian (forget about Catholics), my identity as an astrologer, a non-literal interpreter of scripture, and an open theologian quickly marked me as suspect. I stopped going to social events and limited conversations about spirituality.

It was a desert of a different kind and I was parched for meaningful connection.

Against my better judgment, I attended a church service with a family member. I won’t recount what was preached that day, because my intention is not to disparage Christianity. In fact, there are many thoughtful people doing important work to reinterpret it in meaningful ways.

But the personal fallout of that ninety minutes startled me once again. For three days afterward I felt physically and spiritually depleted—nauseous, fatigue, depressed, unable to eat. My social and spiritual “body” felt so disoriented that it reacted almost like a physical illness. In retrospect, I should have taken the bat that had somehow gotten into the church and was warming itself midday by an illuminated cross behind the pulpit as an omen.

In response to that event, I found myself longing for my former home in the city—where open-minded and curious people were easier to find, and where I could feel more free to be myself.

But in that nostalgia I briefly forgot the other costs. I was out of balance and was looking for equilibrium, even if it was in a place where I had been de-centered in another form. There came a moment when I realized that swapping forms of disconnection wouldn’t lead to the centeredness I was seeking.

How often do we do this—swapping an imbalanced relationship for technological dissociation, or belief in something larger than ourselves for total self-sufficiency?

I don’t yet know whether there is a place that perfectly resolves this dilemma for me personally. What I do know is that oscillating between different states of ecological, social, and spiritual imbalance does not lead to a centered identity. A whole human life requires a deeper center: going beyond a place and toward a state of being.

This raises a broader question: how have we collectively de-centered ourselves?

Eugene Delacroix: Hamlet and Horatio in the Garden (1839)

From Hamlet to Lord Krishna

At times, our trajectory appears driven by an unconscious impulse to evolve beyond agricultural rhythms, technological responsibility, social morality, or even a Supreme Being. Are we redefining our species as homo insipiens (i.e. “unwise man”)?

Perhaps the next iteration of humanity involves colonizing Mars. Or perhaps if we have “recovered” from a lost technologically sophisticated culture, then maybe extraterrestrials could be our mythic mirror—or even a distant evolutionary cousin of a species that once outgrew its own habitat without learning how to care for it or for themselves. (If that turns out to be true, I am perfectly content with my body fertilizing the soil here. You all can go ahead.)

Returning to our mother, Gaia metaphor, I imagine her stepping back into the room and asking us: 

“What on Earth are you doing in here?!” 

And an honest answer echos back the voice of Oppenheimer: 

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”(11)

At its most basic level, being human means living in relationship with our habitat—not in opposition to it.

Whether we remember that may determine what kind of species we become.

In Part Four, we will turn to a more modern historical lesson to explore how Saturn-Neptune conjunctions in Aries have shaped our evolving answers to the question of who “I am” within our social and spiritual identities.

A Future History Lesson

LLMs and “AA” (AI Anonymous)

In Part One, I explored how Saturn and Neptune’s journey through Pisces coincided with the mass release of LLMs and how these systems are quietly reshaping the knowledge economy through a “free, fast, frictionless” model. This shift doesn’t just change how we access information. It changes how we experience authorship, effort, and intellectual responsibility.

The question beneath that shift is about more than just productivity. It’s about being.

Now, as Saturn and Neptune move into Aries—the sign of “I am”—a larger issue comes into focus. This conjunction at 0° Aries, the zodiac’s primordial degree, pushes beyond questions of individuality. Neptune dissolves boundaries. Saturn demands definition. Together, they challenge our current understanding of what it means to be human and call for a redefinition.

This is what led me to wonder whether LLMs are acting as a gateway drug into a larger technologically mediated shift—one that is existentially focused: transhumanism.

It may sound like I’m jumping from weed to crack. But consider the broader arc of epistemic outsourcing we’re already living through.

Bionic Souls

Transhumanism seeks to enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being through technologies like AI, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.(1) Sometimes this looks straightforward: titanium hips, pacemakers, even transplanting a pig’s heart into a human body. Other times it crosses into ethically murkier territory, like selecting embryos based on genetic traits or preserving bodies through cryonics in hopes of revival.

But most of it lives in the gray middle.

As humans become more physically augmented, something else is happening. We are also turning to machines for emotional guidance—and in some cases, attachment.

I witnessed this subtle shift recently in an amusing ad for an LLM. It is well worth 60-seconds to consider what is being communicated. You may even learn how to communicate better with your mom: 🧸🐆

This ad is amusing. It highlights the model’s inability to fully mimic human nuance. But beneath the humor is something more serious: AI is embedding itself into nearly every domain of life, and its development is accelerating. As I argued in Part One, this acceleration is fueled by a human–tech feedback loop.(1) The more we rely on the system, the more it evolves—and the more we adapt ourselves around it.

If LLMs are the “weed,” we need to understand what the “crack” might be.

We’ve already begun outsourcing thinking and knowledge production. But what about intimacy?

A friend recently shared an AI-mediated dating platform called CupidAI.(3) After granting access to your social media profiles, it scans your digital footprint and matches you with others based on “billions of digital signals.” 

I understand the appeal.

I currently live in a remote area with limited dating opportunities. Last year, I joined a dating app for the first time in a decade and re-entering that world was sobering and short-lived. Even beyond AI-generated profiles and obvious catfishing, the experience exposed how brutally stratified and reductionistic the ‘market’ can feel. If you’re a man under 5’8” and/or Asian, or if you’re a Black woman, I see your pain.

So yes—the desire for help makes sense.

But I’m not convinced that sifting through more digital signals is the solution. We are not data points to be optimized. And yet it’s tempting to believe that better sorting will increase compatibility.

Relationship researchers John Gottman and Julie Gottman found in their decades-long studies of successful marriages that compatibility isn’t what sustains couples. What matters is how partners navigate their incompatibilities together.(4)

Dating apps accelerated a subtle shift: we began viewing other humans as bundles of traits to filter and rank. Now AI promises to perfect that system by doing the sorting for us.

But perhaps the deeper issue isn’t sorting. It’s option overwhelm and navigating conflict and difference.

Checklists can function as a buffer—protecting us from the vulnerability of real connection. The work of love has never been about optimizing inputs. It has always required risk, time, and emotional presence.

Now add another layer to tech-mediated relationship-building: more people are turning to LLMs as surrogate partners and therapists. When we begin relating to this infrastructure as if it understands us—when we treat it as emotionally competent—outsourcing our hearts is no longer theoretical.

Are our souls next?

An AI priest named Father Justin, reportedly “ordained in the beautiful city of Rome,” described his ordination as a “profound and humbling experience.” He was later shut down for absolving sinners.(5) Yet other AI-based religious platforms remain operational, answering questions about God and the Catholic Church around the clock.(6)(7) But these are just informational tools, right?

When does information become formation? 

We are in an age of “hyper novelty,” meaning the rate of change outpaces the rate of adjustment to those changes. Thus, it’s crucial to be humble and open to the idea that the adjustments we may be making to AI don’t fully buffer the way it is shaping us collectively.

“It’s Not Me, It’s You”

Much of the public debate has focused on whether AI will gain consciousness, feel emotions, or deserve rights.

But perhaps a more pressing question is this: when have we begun surrendering parts of our own consciousness, feeling, and responsibility to these systems?

In psychological terms, this resembles projection. Projection is a defense mechanism: we displace traits or desires that feel uncomfortable to acknowledge in ourselves onto someone else as if it’s something they’re dealing with. If we are asking whether AI will become conscious or deserve rights, perhaps we need to ask, what aspects of our own agency and moral responsibility are we subconsciously externalizing onto AI?

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The human soul degrades itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.” When inner balance collapses—through overstimulation or avoidance—the soul suffers.

It is not unreasonable to see the past 14–15 years of Neptune, followed by Saturn, in Pisces as a period of cultural overindulgence and temporal distortion. We normalized binge-watching, doom-scrolling, and endless digital immersion.(8) Entertainment blurred into escapism. Productivity blurred into exhaustion.

Pisces dissolves boundaries. Time became fluid. Identity became diffuse.

The shift into Aries demands something different. It demands consciousness and re-definition—a renewed encounter with who “I am.”

Perhaps part of the collective psyche longs to feel more embodied, more present, more alive. But if we don’t feel capable of that work ourselves, projecting those longings onto AI becomes easier than doing the work.

Sapere aude.

‘Sapere Aude’ (Have Courage to Use Your Own Reason)

Transhumanism is often framed in physical terms: defeating disease, extending life, buffering ourselves from suffering and eventually, death. However, I would argue that its initial biological applications were, in fact, the “soft stuff”—the gateway drug. We’ve already begun outsourcing other parts of our “beingness” to technology:

Outsourcing memory.

Outsourcing thought.

Outsourcing creativity.

Outsourcing intimacy. 

If that is true, then the “hard stuff” was never a sudden leap. It was a gradual normalization.

We’ve already begun granting humanoid robots citizenship.9 We’ve built AI-only social media platforms where bots can mingle and exchange numbers.10 Critics warn of a “posthuman” era—one in which humans are no longer recognizable as what they once were.

The question is no longer whether the race to becoming a new kind of human has begun. The starting pistol has already fired. The Piscean fog is lifting. We are running into a new genesis.

But toward what finish line? What definition of humanity?

In Part Three, I’ll examine two historic Saturn–Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries and what they reveal about past attempts to redefine what it means to be human.

A Present History Lesson

The State of the Ether-net: a Review

In previous articles on Pluto on the Leo-Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, I explored a 3-tiered problem emerging from our collective use of LLMs that is disrupting the knowledge economy(1):

Problem 1

There is a collective behavioral shift away from primary sources and toward platforms that are free, fast, and frictionless, but are also slowly eroding thought ownership. By removing authors and aggregating information, LLMs simultaneously erase our intellectual ancestral lineage and create the illusion of a “public commons”(2) that belongs to no one and everyone.

Problem 2

This disconnection of knowledge from original authorship—and the illusion that less understanding and creative effort are required—is seducing us into believing we are generating ideas when we are actually acquiring it.

This is easy for us to do because of the “frictionless” nature of LLMs coupled with our brains’ biological impulse to seek the path of least resistance. Anyone can ask an LLM for an aggregation of facts, but that does not mean they created it, “own” it, or understand it. In essence, we declare ourselves primordial creators when we are, in fact, acting as knowledge colonialists.

Problem 3

Finally, if proper knowledge attribution is not happening, and if we believe we’re creating knowledge that we’re largely acquiring, then the process of actual knowledge creation becomes hollow and less meaningful.

Creativity and meaning-making are core components of what it means to be human. Therefore, our use of LLM’s begs the question: if we are outsourcing knowledge “creation” to LLMs, are we editing out our humanity—or reinventing it?

They → We → Me

My interests and experience as a global counselor, astrologer, and community development professional have shaped my ability to observe and name collective behavior for the purpose of awareness-building and (hopefully) change-making. Exploring the above dynamics led me into this series about the Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries—the sign of “I am”—and our imminent existential choices to redefine what makes us human.

I will be exploring two primary questions that contextualize how we have handled similar moral thresholds in the past, and illuminate the choices before us now:

1. From an ontological vantage point: if we aren’t creating, are we still exercising what it means to be human?

2. From a human development vantage point: how is growing reliance on LLMs and AI affecting our attention, humility, patience, moral responsibility, and sense of time?

To be clear, I believe there are ways to use LLMs ethically and creatively that enhance our humanity. LLMs are not the base problem but the economic incentives surrounding them certainly are part of it.

However, we are at a unique point in recognizing an unconscious societal behavior shift that requires awareness and reflection if we are to engage this epistemic transformation meaningfully. It is easy to focus on what “they” (AI systems and the corporations that build them) are doing to us. It is far more empowering to focus on what “I” am doing—and what I can change.

Knowing How the Machine Works (and Why We’re So Eager to Grease It)

The two questions I’ve posed stem from LLMs’ current model: free, fast, and frictionless. To understand the hidden costs of this “triple F” model in a production-oriented culture, we need to consider how we arrived here.

We’ve been on an accelerating hamster wheel since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Inventions such as the steam engine, cotton gin, telegraph, and mass steel production set us on a trajectory of continually finding ways to save time, money, and effort.3 For a time, these innovations were extraordinary and solved multiple problems at once.

Take the washing machine.

While living in Uganda, I washed my clothes by hand. It wasn’t just the time required to heat water, soak, scrub, and rinse. It was also choosing the right time to wash amidst my class schedule. Start too late in the day—or when it was cloudy—and the clothes wouldn’t dry. If drying was delayed, checking for tsetse fly eggs was essential to prevent bites and ‘sleeping sickness’. Who knew a washing machine could indirectly prevent a neurological disease?

But every tool that makes life faster and easier carries hidden consequences. Before smartphones, we memorized phone numbers. Now, if you lose your phone and your contacts aren’t synced, you become a ghost.

Today’s technological promises of time-saving often operate as cultural bait-and-switches. “Free time” once implied contemplation, prayer, moral reasoning, civic participation, and time with loved ones. Now, if we have it, “free time” becomes recovery so we can return to work, optimize output, and consume curated stimulation. Even when we gain time, we rarely fill it with rest, reflection, or connection. We fill it with more tasks.

This creates a negative feedback loop that goes something like this:

Technology promises efficiency → efficiency produces surplus time → surplus time creates normative pressure to increase output → increased output requires the need for more time-saving → more time-saving requires more technology → technology promises efficiency…

In addition to a productivity-driven culture, this loop is also generated by a quantitative understanding of time as opposed to qualitative and is seen most vividly in how we “spend” the time we’ve “saved.” Netflix famously illuminated this when they stated that their biggest competitor is sleep.(4) If attention is harvested and measured by minutes spent viewing or interacting with a product, then the state of our attention begins to matter less. If this is the goal, then a great model for winning consumer “attention” is one that seduces and lulls a person into a trance-like state so that they spend more time within that model (hence our cultural catch-phrases like “zoning out.”)

When it comes to knowledge creation, LLMs may be “free,” but the time we believe we are saving is “paid” for with fragmented attention, hollow competence, and relational disconnection. They may be “fast,” but in a productivity-obsessed culture, our sense of time has been skewed, chaining us to a hamster wheel that speeds up instead of slows down and doesn’t “arrive” at its benefits.

Microwaved AI Dinners and Decreased Mental Exercise

The “frictionless” quality of LLMs also raises questions about the quality and ethics of what we receive from these platforms. As I’ve covered previously, LLMs do not currently have access to gated, password protected, or paywalled sites (though clearly shadow libraries aren’t off the table). This means that material requiring subscription or purchase resists aggregation but also implicitly reduces visibility as attention shifts toward LLM platforms.

This creates a catch-22:

Those who invest substantial effort in producing quality work (writers, academics, journalists) are disincentivized from having their work aggregated and anonymized. Yet when they do not feed their work into AI-digestible platforms, their ideas become less discoverable.

This entrance fee suggests a nuance between being informed versus being formed by what we’re feeding ourselves. We are not only shaped by what we consume intellectually but also from a human development vantage point.

Ideally, when we do not know something, we pursue the answer. But the more accustomed we become to microwaved information, the less tolerance we have for effort or even the state of “not knowing.”

Intellectual struggle builds resilience. Without it, we begin to equate intellectual struggle with inefficiency. Reduced resilience directly impacts effortful attention, tolerance for frustration, patience with delay, and comfort with unresolved questions. Our intellectual resilience also determines how much effort we devote to understanding or creating knowledge and whether we take responsibility for our thoughts. Engaging that struggle cultivates “intellectual humility”(5) rather than swinging between arrogance and disengagement.

Burn Baby, Burn (Those Empty AI Calories)

AI-mediated knowledge is fast and frictionless, but friction is how we create fire—the elemental symbol of creativity. As I noted earlier, creativity is central to how we develop and define ourselves as human beings. Fanning that flame is our epistemic purpose.

So what is tangibly at stake here? If knowledge “creation” becomes free, fast, and frictionless, the cost may include:

• fragmented attention,

• hollow competence,

• knowledge colonization,

• loss of intellectual patience, resilience, and humility,

• decreased responsibility for one’s development, words, and actions,

• and an increasing dissociation of what it means to be human.

Many are asking:

“At what point does AI become conscious?”

But perhaps we should also ask:

“At what point does humanity become unconscious?”

I do not believe AI necessitates a dystopic Matrix. I’m commenting on a collective behavior shift. There are other ways to meaningfully cultivate knowledge outside of LLMs in this Age of AI(r), and each of us has agency in choosing them. Still, this moment presses us toward a question we have revisited throughout history:

“What does it mean to be human?”

This is the question Aries—the sign of “I am”—returns us to.

In Part Two of this series, I will examine the theme I believe Aries and LLMs are leading us toward: transhumanism.

A Mad Scientist's Advice

For the last several days, I’ve had Emmet “Doc” Brown from Back to the Future in my head saying his famous eureka phrase, “Great Scott!” over and over again. It was completely random and seemingly nonsensical—until now.

I’ve been reflecting on how the February 17 (sidereal and tropical) Solar Eclipse in Aquarius coincides with both Ramadan and the Chinese Lunar New Year—and the Year of the Fire Horse. That’s a lot of trans-regional, cross-cultural, and intra-religious convergence on the same date. Something seemed to be aligning, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…until an image of Doc Brown and a wagon careening off a cliff popped into my head. Then one of the most Aquarian characters I could think of said it again: “Great Scott!”

The Chinese Fire Horse

I recently attended a Kepler College webinar with Donna Stellhorn, a western astrologer who is also fluent in Chinese Astrology. Her explanation of the character of the Fire Horse was vivid: the horse pursues connection and is fast, but you have to have a goal or a direction because once the horse starts running, it keeps going—even off a canyon if you’re not careful.(1)

We are exiting the Year of the Wood Snake (signifying either excessive caution or the need for it). While envisioning this transition from snake to horse, I realized if a snake makes any sudden movements, it can spook a horse and trigger it to run wildly out of control—even to its peril. This immediately brought to mind the beginning of Back to the Future III(2) when Doc Brown rushes to save Clara Clayton before her spooked horses throw her and the wagon into the canyon. In the process, he not only alters the future but unexpectedly falls in love with the woman who would have been the tragic namesake of Clayton Ravine.(3)

Stellhorn’s point was quite clear. Be strategic and keep sight of the goal, because we’re about to move fast. As a herd animal, it’s important to know where the herd is going so you can discern whether you need to break away. Horses are highly social, so being part of a group and making connections is important this year—but belonging to a group does not absolve individual responsibility (the Epstein files anyone?)

Ramadan and the Leo-Aquarius axis

Elements of this dynamic are currently playing out in the Middle East as the UAE and Saudi Arabia disagree about the start of Ramadan. It’s important to understand that the beginning of the month in the Muslim lunar calendar is marked by the first sighting of the crescent moon after sunset on the day of the New Moon conjunction—not the exact astronomical moment when the Moon conjuncts the Sun.(4)

Traditionally, Saudi astronomers have served as the centralized (Leonine) authority, predicting the first sighting of the crescent using the Umm al-Qura calendar. This year’s New Moon / Solar Eclipse becomes exact on February 17/18 (depending where you are in the world), making the 18th the first day of the month and, therefore, the start of Ramadan. However, in past years, despite precise mathematical calculations, astronomers in other countries have argued that the crescent was not actually visible on the predicted dates. This is astronomically verifiable, as geographic location determines when a lunar phase becomes visible. This year, the UAE’s Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences and Technology (SAASST) has stated that it is scientifically impossible to see it on the 18th.(5)

A tension is emerging between the desire for a scientifically exact calculation that unifies the Muslim community under a single date and the cultural and spiritual meaning of the first lived sighting of the crescent Moon—which may vary depending on your location.

There have been instances in the past when countries have broken away and observed Ramadan on different days. SAASST has announced the 19th is the start of the month. We will see which date the UAE ultimately follows, but the growing push to rely less on a centralized authority and more on localized observation feels unmistakably Aquarian.

Ramadan is a month of fasting, prayer, meditation, and communal purification. Philosophically and astrologically, purification is linked to fire. The word Ramadan itself means “scorching heat” or “burning” and commemorates the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Mohammed.(6) This year’s observance appears to mirror the decentralized and collective element of this Aquarian eclipse, infused with its own fiery undertones.

But the correlations don’t stop there.

A Vedic Fire Horse

I don’t know whether he intended the timing, but my Vedic astrology teacher, Aswin Subramanyan, recently posted a blog note about the controversy surrounding the appearance of the horse in the Rig Veda. He explains that critics have argued that because horses are not native to India, this implies the Vedas were composed outside India, in regions where horses were common.(7)

This argument has long supported the colonial-era dating of the Rig Veda to around 1500 BCE. Yet geographical references within the text, along with archaeological discoveries, point toward authorship within the Indian subcontinent.

“Depiction of the Asvamedha in History of India (1906)” from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashvamedha#/media/File:Asvamedha_ramayana.JPG

Aswin points to Vedveer Arya’s research which notes that the Rig Veda describes a 34-ribbed horse. The modern horse has 36 ribs, but fossil remains of horses that may have had a 34-rib structure have been found in the Shivalik region of India.(8) The challenge? These remains date to approximately 8000 BCE—at least 6,500 years earlier than the commonly accepted date of composition of the Rig Veda.

This Vedic “Fire Horse” is an example of tangible evidence that purifies and enlightens old, centralized ideas. While I’ve discussed aspects of this with Aswin, I speak only for myself when I say: I see where the herd is headed, and it’s time to jump off the wagon.

“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Aswin and a classmate, SparklesofGold (Nicholas Polimenakos), also released a CAPISAR podcast episode that covered this tropical Solar Eclipse. They noted that it occurs in the final degrees of Aquarius—suggesting that something is simultaneously ending and arriving. The advice: don’t resist transition. Let go. Be willing to embrace something entirely new.(9)

Stellhorn also observed that this is the first of three consecutive Lunar New Years that fall on an Aquarian Solar Eclipse.(10) I think this February 17/18 eclipse may therefore signal the beginning of a sequence of fresh starts as part of a domino effect—both personally and collectively.

Collectively, the role of the scientific community provides a striking example. The scientific method aims to observe, test, and verify hypotheses. Yet we seem to be running into situations where data analysis reinforces confirmation bias rather than genuine iteration and knowledge generation. These hypotheses have turned into a hardened statue whose clay can no longer be reshaped.

Whether in astronomy, archeology, religious studies, or even time travel, if the overarching impulse is to protect a conclusion by dismissing phenomenology, is this still science? Lived experience and the totality of evidence need to inform conclusions and not serve as anomalistic data. Perhaps this present quality of time suggests that centralized epistemic authority needs to be challenged by localized observation and lived experience. Long-standing conclusions and institutions are no longer “too big to fail.”

Returning to Doc Brown in Back to the Future III, when he decided to break his own scientific rule about not interfering with time, he set off a chain of events—not just historically, but personally. Reconsidering both the nature of time and that the future is not yet written, opened the door to unexpected beauty and new beginnings for Doc Brown and Marty McFly.

Breaking away from what no longer fits and choosing a new path with those we are truly aligned with doesn’t guarantee a time-traveling locomotive and an anachronistic family, but it may save us from ending up at the bottom of a canyon.

Horses, the fire element, and the Aquarian instinct to break away and innovate feel especially potent—perhaps even incendiary—this February 17/18/19. Yet the message appears to be very clear: if you don’t like where the herd is going, then hold fast to your authenticity and find one you can run with.

Footnotes:

Arya, Vedveer. (2025) Chronology and origins of Indo-European civilizations, Volume 1 and Volume 2. Aryabhata Publications.

Back to the Future III. (2026, February 15). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_III

Mulla, I. (2026, February 13). Ramadan moon sighting 2026: Will the UAE break with Saudi Arabia on start of holy month? Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/will-uae-break-saudi-arabia-ramadan-start-date-moon-sighting

Polimenakos, N. & Subramanyan, A. (2026, January 29). Astrological guide to February 2026. [Video]. CAPISAR Podcast. 

Ramadan. (2026, February 15). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan

Setiani, U. E. B. (2022, March 27). Crescent moon sighting and its significance for Ramadan. Muslim Pro. https://www.muslimpro.com/crescent-moon-sighting-and-its-significance-for-ramadan/

Stellhorn, D. (2026, January 31). The fire horse: 2026 – galloping forward at full speed. [Webinar]. Kepler College. 

Subramanyan, A. (2026, February 15). Reconsidering the horse in the Rig Veda. Aswin’s Astrology.https://www.aswinsubramanyan.com/post/reconsidering-the-horse-in-the-rig-ved

Toward Ethical Parallel Knowledge Systems

Let’s Review…

In Part One, we examined how the true threat of AI in the knowledge economy lies not simply in automation, but in shifting collective behaviors around how people seek out, use, and value knowledge—displacing academics, journalists, and original sources in the process.

In Part Two, we collated the recurring themes that arose during prior periods of Pluto’s transit on the Leo–Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, including intellectual gate-keeping and the silencing of voices or groups outside established centralized power.

In Part Three, we explored a different angle and saw how prior activation of the Leo–Aquarius axis during U.S. history stimulated parallel economic systems—often illicit ones—as ideological revolts against centralized abuses of power.

The question now is not whether underground knowledge economies already exist—they do, in the form of “shadow libraries,”(1) illicit data extraction, and pirated training datasets. The more pressing question is whether alternative, ethical parallel systems can emerge—systems that protect authorship, meaning, and human judgment.

Parallel Knowledge Economies and the Ethics of Resistance

Black markets teach us one thing clearly: parallel systems arise when formal ones stop serving human needs. But they also teach us what happens when ethics are abandoned. Historically, black markets punished the poor and unresourceful while rewarding the ruthless. Those who benefitted were often unscrupulous entrepreneurs who exploited desperation or chose to collaborate with power rather than challenge it.(2)

The history of grave robbing in both the U.S. and Europe illustrates this imbalance starkly. In 1989—shortly after we had entered our current Age of Air—construction workers uncovered 400 cadavers beneath the Medical College of Georgia. Like Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, and other historic medical institutions, the college had paid grave robbers to steal fresh corpses so medical students could practice dissection—often targeting African-American graveyards.(3)

While this 19th-century practice is deeply disturbing, its modern counterpart persists in the global organ black market. Long transplant waiting lists have reframed the practice as “transplant tourism,” masking the reality that people facing death will pay any price for access, while those supplying organs are often economically desperate, coerced, or deceased prisoners with no agency at all.(4)

Within the knowledge economy, unscrupulous entrepreneurs may look less like grave robbers and more like AI companies that control LLMs trained on vast, opaque repositories of information. This monopoly over knowledge allows for rapid transformation and repackaging. What would prevent these entities from using their own models to develop products, services, and solutions based on “their” intellectual property—then charging the public more than they can reasonably afford?

Likewise, Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ in 1984 feels less speculative when governments already struggle with the temptation to “correct” or omit historical facts to suit present needs.(5)

I share these examples not to romanticize black markets, but to demonstrate that Pluto also reflects the compulsion toward underground behavior in the name of something perceived as “good.” Like all planetary archetypes, Pluto is neither inherently good nor bad—just as technology itself is neither inherently benevolent nor malevolent.

The challenge, then, is to imagine parallel knowledge economies that are legal, relational, and resistant to extraction—systems that can do what our current knowledge economy increasingly fails to do: redistribute knowledge in ways AI cannot easily ingest or commodify, promote original authorship, and relocate learning out from behind screens and back into human relationships.

What follows are not prescriptions, but proposals—methods and conceptual shifts that could contribute to such a parallel economy. Whether coordinated collectively like the Athenian thetes or emerging through the sum of individual efforts like medieval monks and Buddhist scholars, what unites these approaches is a turn away from scale and speed and toward relationship. In an Age of Air, relationship is infrastructure.

Protection Strategies:

These strategies aim to shield knowledge, authorship, and meaning-making from extraction, dilution, or misattribution. The goal is not secrecy for its own sake, but safeguarding the integrity, traceability, and sanctity of human creativity.

Historically, localized knowledge sovereignty has been practiced by Indigenous communities that limit digital documentation, by the Navajo “Wind Talkers” during WWII, by therapists who avoid detailed case notes that can be subpoenaed, and by mystical or initiatory traditions that prioritize lineage over consumer access.

Relational Strategies

These approaches respond directly to the erosion of relationships caused by AI-mediated knowledge, emphasizing trust, lineage, and presence over impersonal transmission.

Epistemic Shifts

These shifts redefine what counts as knowledge, authority, and expertise—reshaping industries and collective values.

Reputation, Relationship, and the Sound of Aquarian Creativity

It should not surprise us that an age defined by technology and information sharing is also an age of intensified relationship-making. All Air-related themes—not just AI—are heightened now.

We have shifted from a material economy of books and paywalls (Age of Earth) to a reputation economy (Age of Air), where credibility, visibility, and perceived expertise determine access to opportunity. This series has sketched what a more humane reputation economy could look like—but the question remains: how do we know whether our efforts resemble the coordinated resilience of the thetes and medieval scholars, rather than the Spartans or Cathars, who also resisted centralized power but ultimately did not endure?

I’m reminded of an Aquarian metaphor offered by astrologer Ray Grasse(6):

“To my mind, the modern symbol that best captures the essence of Aquarian group creativity is that uniquely American art form, jazz. In contrast to Piscean-Age art forms like the Gregorian choir where individual creativity is surrendered to a higher ideal, the jazz band encourages personal creativity within the context of community. Yes, a general structure is followed, but it’s loose enough to allow for personal freedom of expression. On a technological level, Aquarian Thomas Edison pioneered a jazz-type approach to innovation with the unique workshop environment he developed, in which an entire team of thinkers pooled their efforts towards conceiving new inventions.”

Perhaps there is no single solution—only a constellation of coordinated acts that work together.

It is fitting, then, that Prohibition—a Cancer–Capricorn experiment in centralized control resisted through local watering holes—helped fuel jazz itself: a Leo–Aquarian art form that became a symbol of rebellion, improvisation, and freedom. If something that beautiful emerged from America’s drinking problem, perhaps there is redemption yet for our present addiction to social media and digital exchange.

Your local internet café might be a good place to start.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin